


do you dream or do you grieve

by shinelikestars



Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Anxiety, Canon Compliant, DEH from Zoe's eyes, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Teen Romance, grieving process, lying and truth telling and everything in between, occasional moments of lightness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2018-12-31 14:19:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12134307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinelikestars/pseuds/shinelikestars
Summary: zoe murphy becomes an only child in the blink of an eye.and the worst part is, she's not even sad about it.(aka "deh" from zoe's perspective)





	do you dream or do you grieve

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from the song "he's not here" from the musical next to normal.
> 
> credit to 75% of the dialogue goes to steven levenson, the author of the book for dear evan hansen. there are some original scenes and original dialogue in here, and all the descriptions of the characters' actions are mine, so that credit does go to me.
> 
> zoe murphy is one of my favorite characters of all time, and when i was hit with a spark of inspiration to write the musical through her eyes, i knew i had to do it. so here it is, guys. hope you enjoy.
> 
> xo,  
> L

Zoe wakes up on the first day of junior year with a killer headache.

 

She gets these pretty often, that dull roar in her temples a painful familiarity, but they usually only happen after yet another family argument, so she’s never really woken up with one before. She suspects that the impending demands of junior year could be the culprit, and she groans at the throbbing in her skull as she swings her legs over the edge of her bed and stands.

 

Briefly, she considers stealing some of Connor’s pot (she knows exactly where he keeps it — tucked behind a battered copy of _Le Petit Prince_ on his bookshelf) and rolling a quick joint before school (her brother’s always claimed that the pot helps with headaches), but then she decides that requires too much effort for six in the morning, and her parents would probably smell it on her anyway. She doesn’t need to give her mother a heart attack on the first day of school; God knows one stoner kid is enough for Cynthia Murphy’s arteries.

 

She throws on the cleanest blouse she can find, shoves some bobby pins into her hair to keep it out of her face and rolls up the cuffs on her jeans so her little galaxy of Sharpie stars show. Her dad hates those stars, claims they ruin a “perfectly good pair of pants”, but her mom thinks it’s a great display of her creativity or some crap like that, so she doesn’t get in trouble for drawing them anymore. Backpack over her shoulder and Converse in hand (“no shoes on in the house, please!”), she takes the stairs two at a time, praying that’ll somehow make the day go faster.

 

The moment she sees her brother at the kitchen table, every muscle in her body tenses.

 

Really, she shouldn’t be surprised to see him there. Connor skips breakfast when he can, but it makes sense for him to be here on the first day, especially when it’s his senior year. Their mom had probably forced him into a chair before he could get a word in edgewise — or maybe he’d been too high to resist. Zoe eyes him carefully, unable to conclude whether he’s high, hungover, or both. His eyes are red-rimmed, but he hasn’t touched his cereal, and he’s got his head down like he has a migraine, too, so she’s leaning more towards hungover. 

 

Her dad’s at the table, too, a newspaper clutched tightly in his hands like a lifeline, phone facedown and buzzing with emails and texts already. Work never leaves him for more than a moment, even when he’s home, but lately it’s kept him distracted enough that the fighting between him and Connor has been at a minimum. He greets her with a slight nod and a murmured, “Morning, honey,” as he scans the stocks, and Zoe doesn’t bother to respond, carefully skirting around the battered messenger bag her brother’s tossed by his feet as she goes to hang her backpack on the back of her chair. 

 

Her mother, already dressed in her signature Spandex yoga ensemble, pauses from her fidgeting with the coffee pot and turns to offer her a tight smile. “Hi, sweetie! Ready for your first day of junior year?” she says, voice high and artificially sweet enough that Zoe can already tell there’s some sort of disagreement on the horizon.

 

She brushes past her mother and opens the fridge. “I guess,” she replies absent-mindedly, searching for the milk. Out of the corner of her eye, she spots an empty carton on the counter and groans. Of course her brother finished the milk, the bastard. It’s become one of his favorite ways to taunt her, since he utterly despises the Kashi granola cereal that she swears by, something he calls “hippie bullshit”. Connor doesn’t even like cereal that much, and he usually doesn’t bother eating anyway, but obviously he’d been in the mood to use up all the milk today. There’s another container in the fridge, though, with just enough left to maybe get her through a bowl, and Zoe grabs it with a scowl on her face, the morning already soured.

 

Her mom’s already got her box of cereal, a bowl, and a spoon waiting for her on the table, so Zoe heads over with the remnants of milk and does her best to concoct something resembling a normal bowl of cereal. From across the table, she can detect the faintest of snickers from her brother.

 

“Have fun in hell today, Zo,” he snarks. Her fingers go white around her spoon. He _knows_ she hates that old nickname.

 

“You’ll be there too, Connor,” she reminds him.

 

Connor rolls his eyes, leaning forward on his elbow. “No, I won’t,” he says.

 

“It’s your senior year, Connor, you are not missing the first day,” her mom insists, pouring a cup of coffee for her dad.

 

“I already said I’d go tomorrow. I’m trying to find a compromise here,” her brother argues, looking up at their mom with what Zoe is sure would’ve been utterly convincing puppy-dog eyes ten years ago.

 

“Are you going to get involved here, or are you too busy on your e-mail, Larry?” her mom snaps. Zoe stares into her bowl of cereal and wishes she could disappear into the floor. She can’t remember the last time they had a normal breakfast, can’t remember the last time a day went by without someone in her family starting a fight, but there’s a small, stupid part of her that wishes more than anything else they could have times like that again, wishes she didn’t have to feel so on edge all the time.

 

“You have to go to school, Connor,” her dad replies, newspaper abandoned, eyes already glued to the screen of his iPhone. He gets a new one every year, courtesy of the law firm. 

 

“That’s all you’re gonna say?” Her mom’s voice is so shrill when they get like this, and Zoe has to actively resist the urge to cover her ears. She shovels another spoonful of cereal into her mouth and tries to pretend it doesn’t taste like cardboard. Maybe Connor was right.

 

“What do you want me to say? He doesn’t listen. Look at him, he’s not listening. He’s probably high.” Sure enough, her brother’s got a thumb pressed to his forehead, spoon loose in his other hand as he stares vacantly at the table.

 

“He’s definitely high,” Zoe interjects. She needs this argument to blow up already so she won’t have to return to a house full of building tension this afternoon, and besides, fuck Connor for thinking he can get away with being such a blatant druggie, anyway. He’s never been the same since he started buying baggies off of Carter Davis freshman year.

 

“Fuck you,” Connor spits, burying his head in his arms once again.

 

“Fuck you!” she retorts through a mouthful of cereal.

 

“I do not need you picking at your brother right now, that is _not_ constructive,” her mother attempts to mediate. Zoe digs her nails into the palm of the hand in her lap, hidden where her parents can’t see it, until it starts to sting. Why is it always her fault, and never Connor’s? Why is it her picking on him, and not her calling out her brother’s obvious drug problem? And why does her mother seem to harbor the illusion that using words like “constructive”, terms she probably learned in that dumb group for _“Parents of Troubled Teens_ ” she attended for, like, a month last year, will somehow magically make everything better, cause it to make more sense? None of this makes sense. Their family is _fucked up_.

 

“Are you kidding?” is all she can manage to say.

 

“Besides, he’s not high,” her mom protests. Connor raises his head for a moment, and his empty, bloodshot gaze is enough to poke a million holes in that statement. “Are you high?” she asks, turning to Connor. He starts to say no, but it’s such a lie, and the keys jangling in Zoe’s pocket suddenly alert her to the fact that she doesn’t have to stick around to watch this shitshow play out. She’s got a car and a license and somewhere to be soon enough, anyway, so she’s gonna go. 

 

Then she remembers she has to give her asshole of a brother a ride. So much for leaving. Time to read a book instead.

 

“I don’t want you going to school high, Connor, we have talked about this,” her mom says desperately as Zoe digs a book out of her backpack. _Big mistake there, Mom,_ she thinks, _you’ve left an opening._

 

All too predictably, Connor takes advantage of her weakness. “Perfect, so then I won’t go,” he replies, inserting an artificial cheeriness into his voice that’s eerily reminiscent of their mother’s. “Thanks, Mom!” Then he grabs his bag and is gone in a flash, and Zoe’s left to pretend the words on the pages aren’t swimming.

 

What a stellar start to the year. 

 

••••

As if things couldn’t get any worse, Sabrina Patel tells her halfway through second period that her brother shoved some random, broken-armed kid in the hallway this morning. The description of the boy’s trembling and the messy crying he’d tried to hide from everyone else after the fact is enough for Zoe to peg him as Evan something-or-other, a guy with an affinity for polos and khakis who she’d caught staring at her during a jazz band concert last year. 

 

She remembers the scene all too well. Her second solo ever, and her first solo as the sole guitarist in the jazz band, and she’d been so beyond nervous. Connor had done nothing to help, picking at her the entire ride over, the smell of weed rolling off him in waves as he’d asked what she’d do if she forgot a note or plucked the wrong string. Their mom had hissed something about “ _supporting your sister, Connor_ ,” but hadn’t done much to help beyond that, and Zoe had escaped to the bathroom the second they’d reached the school, thankful for the miracles of waterproof mascara as she’d wiped the tears from her cheeks with scratchy toilet paper.

 

Up on the stage just moments before her solo, heart racing and head pounding, she’d looked out into the crowd and found a rare friendly face: a boy in a blue striped polo, eyes fixed on her like she was about to snatch the stars from the sky and hand them to him. Her friend Lizzie had seen him, too, whispered something in her ear about how creepy that was, but Zoe had actually found it more endearing than anything else. There was too much innocence in his gaze for it to be creepy, she’d decided. Then it had been time for her solo, and by the time she’d finished, he’d already disappeared from the crowd.

 

She’d never gotten the chance to talk to him. Today, though, she’s determined to do that, fix what Connor’s damaged and hope for the best. Not only does she have little to no desire to be known as _“that other psycho Murphy kid”_ , as interesting as that might sound, but Evan also deserves better. She knows that.

 

She catches him in the hallway during their five-minute break between classes. Her AP Spanish class is on the other side of the building, but she can make this quick enough if she needs to, maybe grab his number to further apologize later. The way she rushes up to him must be intimidating, because he startles at her presence, curving in a bit on himself as his fingers fly to the hem of his shirt. 

 

“Hey, I’m sorry about my brother. I saw him push you—” that’s a total lie, but she figures it’s easier than explaining the whole Sabrina Patel gossip train thing— “he’s a psychopath.” She pauses, watching as his eyes widen, and then adds, “Evan, right?” 

 

“Evan,” he says, the word sounding strange on his tongue, like it’s foreign to him. 

 

“That’s your name.” Maybe she’d gotten it wrong somewhere, maybe his name’s Eric or something like that — okay, fuck, this apology probably isn’t going so well — 

 

“Y-yes it is, it’s Evan, sorry!” The sentence comes out in a garbled rush, and Zoe now understands why he hadn’t stuck around after her solo. He’s a ball of nerves, something that she bets annoys a lot of people (especially their age), but truth be told, she doesn’t mind it all that much. She’d rather deal with his brand of earnest anxiety than the explosive anger of her brother or the quiet seething of her father, or, worst of all, the over-eager desperation of her mother.

 

“Why are you sorry?” she questions.

 

“Because you said Evan and then I said it, I repeated it, which is just — that is so annoying when people do that,” he says, clearly fumbling for some sort of decent excuse. And it’s true that they barely know each other, and it’d probably be crazy for her to say this to him, but Zoe’s sick of people feeding her excuses. Her parents have been doing it for years — _“Connor doesn’t need therapy, Zoe, he’s just difficult,” “Your brother just isn’t feeling well,” “We’ll have to miss your concert because someone needs to drive Connor to meet with the principal and your father’s got work, honey”_ — and she doesn’t want anyone else adding to that. 

 

He’s _so_ anxious, though, and it’s what he needs to cope. It’s not because he doesn’t care enough to gather the courage to tell her the truth — Zoe gets the feeling that he would if he could. So it’s okay.

 

Instead of honesty hour, she settles for an introduction — “I’m Zoe” — and sticks her hand out. Evan reaches out to shake her hand, but then wipes his own hand on his pants, starts blowing on it like it’s wet or something.

 

“Yes, I — I know, Zoe,” he says.

 

“You know?”

 

“No, no, just I’ve seen you play guitar in jazz band, I _love_ jazz band, I love jazz — well, not all jazz, but definitely like jazz band jazz—”

 

Zoe has to suppress a smile at that. Yeah, she definitely remembers him seeing her play guitar.

 

“That’s so weird, I’m sorry,” he finishes, voice trailing off into more of a murmur as he fiddles with his cast. 

 

“You apologize a lot,” she blurts out, and she’s immediately aware that it was the wrong thing to say when Evan’s whole face goes red.

 

“Sorry — um, you know what I mean,” he mutters. 

 

Evan’s looking away from her, and Zoe takes the opportunity to glance up at the clock. Two minutes till class — shit, she’s gotta go. “Okay, well—” She starts to head in the other direction, but Evan stops her.

 

“Youdon’twannasignmycast, do you—”

 

“What?”

 

“What’d you say?”

 

“I didn’t say anything, you said something,” she clarifies. 

 

“No, I — me? No way… José,” he says awkwardly.

 

She really has to go now. “Okay, José,” she replies, shooting him a thumbs-up. Evan flashes a brief smile, something that kind of makes her heart melt a tiny bit, and then she loses herself in the crowd.

 

She barely makes it to AP Spanish on time, but it’s kind of worth it.

 

She also totally regrets not getting his number. 

 

••••

At first, she thinks she’s come home to an empty house.

 

It’s so quiet that the sound of her Converse thumping to the floor as she takes them off makes her flinch. It echoes throughout the house, bounces off the walls and reverberates strangely. Zoe can’t remember the last time her house was this quiet.

 

Her mom must be out with her yoga friends, she thinks, and her dad’s definitely at work. That just leaves Connor missing from the equation, but she’d bet $50 that he’s already bought some weed off of Carter Davis today and is probably in the park smoking it right now.

 

Then, as she heads up the stairs, she hears something that sounds like a sob. 

 

She pauses on the step; it creaks loudly.

 

And then, again, what is definitely a sob. Then the sob turns into a scream — no, not a scream, a _wail_ , and Zoe’s blood becomes little more than ice, a million different scenarios running through her mind. 

 

“Oh, God, _Connor_!” 

 

It’s her mom. 

 

Zoe races up the stairs, tripping over herself in the rush to get up them and falling hard on her knees. Somehow, the pain only further motivates her to get moving, and she scrambles to her feet, taking the last set of stairs two at a time. 

 

She’s panting as she sprints down the second floor hallway to the source of the noise. She can hear the sobbing again, and it’s only growing louder. 

 

She skids to a stop on sock-clad feet just outside Connor’s door.

 

“Mom?” she calls. Suddenly, every cell in her body is screaming at her to stay put. But she has to make sure her mom’s okay—

 

“Zoe? Oh, God, Zoe — Zoe, sweetheart, don’t come in, okay, don’t come in, just — just, just go downstairs and call 911. Call 911, okay, call 911 and tell them your brother’s not breathing, tell them to _hurry_!” Her mother ends the sentence on a gasping shriek, and for once in her life, Zoe finds it all too easy to obey. 

 

Thirty minutes later, her father covers her eyes as they roll the stretcher out.

 

••••

And just like that, her life changes in the blink of an eye.

 

How do you explain to your friends that you don’t have an older brother anymore, Zoe wonders, restless in her chair at the breakfast table the next morning. Her mom hasn’t come down yet, but her father’s there, fielding endless phone calls from relatives and family friends and, occasionally, the funeral home. _God_ , what a morbid pairing they are, her staring at a dry bowl of cereal because Connor finished the fucking milk just yesterday, him tapping out message after message with shaking hands. 

 

At least she won’t have to worry about Connor finishing the milk anymore, she thinks, and an oily feeling of shame instantly washes over her. What the fuck is _wrong_ with her, it’s her fucking _brother_ whose funeral they’re talking about, not some sitcom character, how can she be making jokes right now? 

 

(Probably because jokes are better than the endless stream of nothing that’s consumed her since yesterday afternoon. Probably because she doesn’t want to focus on the grief she’s totally not feeling, doesn’t want to think about all the memories her parents will probably want her to dredge up for Connor’s eulogy. Are the good memories even there anymore? She thinks she locked them away in some faraway part of her brain a long time ago, to protect them from the very person she created them with, so he couldn’t get to them anymore, so he couldn’t ruin them. She doesn’t know if she can even still access them, it’s been so long.) 

 

“Zoe, honey, I know that this is very hard for all of us, but your mother and I think it would be best for you to not take too much time off from school,” her father says, breaking their peaceful silence. “We don’t want this to hurt your grades and potentially affect your future — not as though colleges wouldn’t understand, but we don’t want to risk it, do we?”

 

Zoe stays quiet. She looks to her father, hoping to meet his eyes and see some sort of pain or worry or anger in them, anything to tell her that he’s not just functioning like a robot right now, but his gaze is still glued to his iPhone. 

 

_Fuck my future,_ she wants to say. _Connor doesn’t get to have a future. Why should I?_

 

Then she asks herself why she’d ever want to say that. Connor stopped giving a shit about her a long time ago, and obviously in death he still hadn’t given a shit, killing himself in his own fucking room with the door wide open for their poor mother to walk in on. Actually, Zoe thinks, face twisting in a scowl, her brother had probably anticipated that she’d be the first one home. He’d probably wanted _her_ to walk in on it — and what kind of sick, twisted shit was that, huh? As if he hadn’t already scarred her for life. It was like he just wanted to dig the knife in one final time. 

 

That’s probably not a great metaphor to use, she realizes.

 

Her father’s phone buzzes again, and Zoe watches as his lips press together in a thin line. “Zoe,” he begins in a strained tone, “the police are just finalizing their reports, making sure everything is accurate — they just want to know if any of us, uh, had any inkling of what was to come.”

 

She can’t help but laugh at that. It’s a hollow sound, and a part of her wants to curl up and die at how much it resembles the way her brother laughs — used to laugh. “I dunno, maybe it was the five trips to rehab in as many years, or the bouncing around between ten different therapists in three different cities? Or maybe it was the dent he left in my door when he tried to break it down last year, screaming that he’d kick my ass. Yeah, Dad, I had no ‘inkling of what was to come,’” she scoffs. 

 

Her father’s jaw is set in a hard line. “They mean more in the scheme of yesterday. Did Connor say anything or do anything that could’ve led you to believe he would do something so… rash?” 

 

She chuckles humorlessly. “Shouldn’t the police be asking me these questions?”

 

“ _Zoe_.”

 

At the thinly-veiled frustration in her father’s voice, Zoe relents, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, foot tapping against the floor at a break-neck speed. “ _No_ , Dad, he was just acting like his usual asshole self. Pushed a random kid in the hallway because he thought he was laughing at him, wouldn’t respond to my texts when I tried to ask him about it — you know how he was. And when I got to the parking lot yesterday to give him a ride home, he wasn’t there. I figured he’d just gotten sick of waiting for me because I was talking to a girl from band for a while and took off to go smoke or whatever.”

 

Her father resumes his typing. “Thank you.”

 

But Zoe’s pissed now, pissed at the poking and prodding and the way all her feelings are being completely dismissed, just like the way they were when Connor was still alive, and so she can’t resist the urge to lash out. “Why are you acting like this is the worst thing to ever happen to us?” 

 

Her father’s fingers go still on the keyboard. “What do you mean?”

 

“I mean, Connor treated us all like shit, and maybe we’ll finally be able to have a normal fucking family dinner now that he’s gone—”

 

“You don’t really mean that, Zoe—”

 

“Yes I do, Dad! Yes, I do. Maybe it’s _better_ this way.” 

 

There’s a quiet gasp from the top of the stairs, and Zoe and her father both look up in the same instant to see her mother standing there, hair frizzy for the first time in Zoe’s life, clad in a robe and bedroom slippers.

 

She doesn’t get to look at her for long, though, because her mother runs back where she came from, her tears echoing down the staircase. Her father leaps to his feet to go comfort her, shooting a glare over his shoulder as he does so.

 

And the worst part is, Zoe doesn’t even feel bad about it. 

 

Because is she really supposed to feel bad for telling the truth? 

 

••••

Being away from school is a bizarre mixture of awful and great. Zoe’s seen the Facebook notifications — school is probably the last place she wants to be right now, not with all the tributes to her brother currently flooding her page, which she’s sure would only be reciprocated times ten in person. Still, being alone for the better part of the day, her mom still tucked away in her bedroom, her father already back at work to “keep busy”, is surprisingly hard. After the first hour of being awake, she learns to keep headphones shoved over her ears and a constant stream of Spotify playing, otherwise she’ll start hearing things she doesn’t want to. 

 

After three hours, she decides to watch Netflix instead, because she needs to keep her eyes focused on something. Right now, they’re just darting around her bedroom, looking at all these things she’s collected over sixteen years of life and her brain finding some terrible way to connect them all back to Connor.

 

After five hours, she gets up to take a shower. For once, the hot water isn’t all used up; that’s a change. She knows why.

 

After seven hours, the storm of emotions inside of her gets to be too much, and Zoe acknowledges that she’ll have to face humanity today after all. Maybe she’ll go to the park, she thinks as she heads down the stairs. Somehow, the thought of that cheers her up a bit. It kind of makes her feel like everything might eventually be okay. 

 

Until she walks into her living room and finds Evan sitting there.

 

Something in her chest instantly begins to ache at the sight of him. He’s too nice to get caught up in this, too good to entangle himself in the fucked-up web of lies that is her family. Evan needs to go home, leave before it’s too late.

 

She’s about to tell him to do just that when her mother strides into the room, hair perfectly coiffed for the first time since last Monday, dressed in a cashmere cardigan without a speck of dirt on it. She almost looks too normal, but at least she’s somewhat functioning again.

 

“Oh, Zoe!” her mom says. She shouldn’t sound as startled as she does, now that there’s only one child in the house to keep track of. Zoe flinches at her own internal monologue, then glances at her mom, then at Evan, then back at her mom.

 

“Why is he here?” She doesn’t mean for the question to come out so harsh, and out of the corner of her eye, she can see Evan flushing pink.

 

“Do you two know each other?” her mom questions. 

 

Zoe pulls her cardigan tight around her. “Um, kind of? Not really,” she finally settles on. Evan mumbles something that sounds like an agreement.

 

“Well, Evan is here to have dinner with us tonight,” her mom says pleasantly, clasping her hands together and shooting Evan a warm smile. Zoe fights the urge to roll her eyes. Leave it to her mom to try to find a coping mechanism in a replacement son already. “He was friends with your brother,” she adds. “Isn’t that wonderful?”

 

_Wonderful? How is any of this wonderful?_ Zoe wants to scream, but doesn’t. As far as they knew, Connor didn’t have any friends. And honestly, she finds it hard to believe that if Connor and Evan _were_ really friends, he’d have let Evan show up to her jazz band concert and stare at her for a good ten minutes. And how would a guy like Evan become friends with a nightmare like her brother anyway?

 

“Your father’s almost home. Evan, honey, let me show you to the kitchen.”

 

This week just keeps getting worse.

 

••••

Her father showing up certainly doesn't make things any better. They sit awkwardly around rotisserie chicken and broccoli and try to pretend that everything’s fine, but don’t they all know better? Evan, to his credit, certainly seems aware of how fucked up this all is — he can’t seem to stay still, fidgeting anxiously in his seat and answering every question with wild eyes and a plethora of stutters. 

 

Zoe doesn’t bother with eating. Her family’s done a really good job at making her lose whatever semblance of an appetite she’d had before. Instead, she picks at the sleeves of her sweater and tries her best not to stare at Evan or just laugh at the utter ridiculousness of it all.

 

“Would anyone else like more chicken?” her dad asks, getting up to heap a second serving onto his plate.

 

Zoe can practically hear the scowl in her mother’s voice as she responds, wineglass clutched tightly in her perfectly-manicured hands. “I think you’re the only one with an appetite, Larry.” Which, how fucking hypocritical is that, when her mom’s the one who made this stupidly extravagant dinner?

 

“The Harrises brought it over,” he says, and well, there’s the Insta-Guilt again. She probably needs to stop assuming things at this point; everything seems like it’s in limbo, now that they live in a world where Connor was apparently friends with the shyest kid in school.

 

“Did Connor tell you about the Harrises?” her mom asks Evan, and Zoe suddenly finds an immense interest in the ends of her hair. Split ends, she thinks. Better get those fixed before November, lest she ruin the sacred annual family Thanksgiving photo. 

 

Evan nods exaggeratedly. Zoe wonders how long he’ll keep up this charade of pretending to care about her parents’ feelings. If it were her in his shoes, she’d be long gone by now. Then again, she’s also not nearly as nice as Evan, so.

 

“We used to go skiing with them, our families,” her mom continues. 

 

“Connor loved skiing,” Evan interjects.

 

That’s bullshit. “Connor hated skiing,” Zoe cuts in. Whether Evan and Connor were friends or not, Evan is obviously just trying to comfort her mom at this point, going along with whatever she’s saying, and she’s already so over it. Why can’t he just tell them the truth, talk about how needlessly broody Connor was, his explosive fits of anger and the worn combat boots he’d owned for three years, his ugly bleached jacket that smelled like stale cigarettes? Why is he putting on this show for them? Their entire life as a family has been a show, up until this point. At some point, it’s got to get cancelled; they have to start over. Zoe’s sick of reruns.

 

“Right! That’s — sorry, that’s what I meant, Connor loved, um, talking about how much he hated skiing.” Evan stumbles over his words, but at least he’s earnest. Zoe can appreciate that. 

 

“You guys, you — hung out a lot?” her mom presses. 

 

“Pretty much,” Evan says breathlessly.

 

“Where?” she can’t help but ask. 

 

“You mean like, where did we — well, mostly we hung out, um, at my house, I mean, sometimes we would come to his house if — if nobody else was here. We would, um, we would e-mail a lot, though, mostly, so that we didn’t have to, um — he didn’t always want to hang out, uh, in person, y’know?” 

 

Now she’s getting annoyed. Annoyed by how complacent Evan is, annoyed by the length of his sentences and how he’ll keep her suffering here forever at this rate, annoyed by everything. “We looked through his emails. There aren’t any from you,” she points out. That’s true — one of the first things her parents had done after Connor died was invade his privacy on every level, snooping through his phone and laptop, searching every drawer in his room. It must be by some grace of God that they hadn’t found his pot. Then again, most normal adults probably don’t think to check behind copies of kids’ novels for illegal drugs.

 

“Yeah, no — no, yeah, of course, yes, that’s cuz — um, that’s because he had a different account, um, it was, it was a secret account. I should’ve said that before, that was probably very confusing,” Evan stammers. 

 

She’s not buying it. “Why was it secret?” 

 

“Just so that no one else could — um, it was more private, I guess, that way,” Evan says. 

 

Well, it does make sense that her brother would want privacy. God knows he barely had any of that in their house. “He knew you read his emails,” her mom accuses, turning to her father.

 

“Somebody had to be the bad guy,” her dad responds, and Zoe’s skin itches with the uncomfortable urge to run away. It’s bad enough that she has to watch scenes like this play out on the daily, but for Evan to see it, too — that’s more than humiliating. Yet another reason why she wishes he would find the guts to up and leave already.

 

“Okay, the weird thing is, the only time I saw you and my brother together was when he shoved you at school last week.” The words roll off of her tongue before she can stop them, and Zoe hates knowing that she’s the cause of the panic in Evan’s eyes, but at the same time, she needs _answers_. This doesn’t add up; this doesn’t make sense. How could Connor have a friend? How could he have someone who cared about him, someone who maybe even thought he was _nice_ , when all he did was shove away the people who loved him most? 

 

There’s a part of her that doesn’t want to believe that Evan and Connor were friends, because in a way, believing that means accepting that Connor chose a random kid over her. Connor decided to stop being her older brother, decided he didn’t like her anymore, couldn't stand his own fucking family, but somewhere along the way, he met a trembling kid in a polo shirt and decided _that_ was the kind of person he wouldn’t harass and scream at. Somewhere along the line, he chose a stranger over family, and even if Zoe does kind of like this particular stranger, that doesn’t make it hurt any less.

 

(But there’s also another tinier part of her that does want to believe they were friends. She wants to believe that on those nights when she heard Connor crying through his bedroom wall, on those nights when she was still too angry to try to comfort him — as if he’d want that anyway — he had someone who was there for him. She wants to believe that he wasn’t _alone_.)

 

“He _shoved_ you?” her mother cries, white wine sloshing in her glass. 

 

“I-I tripped,” Evan says defensively. 

 

“No, I was _there_ ,” Zoe insists, “I saw the whole thing, he pushed you, _hard.”_ The truth is, she didn’t see the whole thing — didn’t see any of it, actually — but she knows her brother well enough to know that what Sabrina Patel had said was true. Connor was never the type to help people up when they tripped, and if Evan had just fallen, then why had Sabrina said she heard Connor calling him a freak?

 

“Oh! I remember now, see, that, that was a misunderstanding because — because, the thing was, he didn’t want us to talk at school,” Evan explains all too eagerly. “And I had tried to — well, to talk to him at school, it wasn’t a big thing, it, it was my fault.” 

 

“Why didn’t he want you to talk to him at school?” Zoe is certain that Evan is going to explode at any given moment, just judging by the sheer amount of anxiety radiating off of him, but that’s what she needs, what they _all_ need. No offense to Evan, but her parents need to hear the truth, that Connor wasn’t some perfect friend who brightened Evan’s life and treated his family like shit because _they_ were really the shitty ones. No, her parents need to hear about the real Connor, and Zoe gets the feeling that if she pushes Evan just a little harder, the real Connor will come out. He’ll tell them — he has to.

 

Evan falters for a moment, gesturing at nothing with his hands before he finally says, “He didn’t really want people to know we were friends. I — I guess he was embarrassed a little.” His cheeks go pink on the last sentence, and while that does sound like the judgmental Connor of Zoe’s childhood, it’s still a little off. Like, Connor’s reputation had already landed him at the bottom of the social totem pole — why would he care if he dropped a few pegs lower, if that was even possible? 

 

Her mom eats it right up. “Why would he be embarrassed?” She already sounds so fond of Evan, and Zoe’s so over this shitshow.

 

“Well, I guess cuz he thought I was sort of — y’know.” Evan can’t finish his sentence, but Zoe will gladly do it for him, the affection she’d once held quickly evaporating.

 

“A nerd?” she fills in the blank.

 

“Zoe,” her dad sighs.

 

“Isn’t that what you meant?” Zoe urges, ignoring the silent reprimands of her parents. 

 

“Uh — loser I was gonna say, actually, but nerd works too.”

 

“That wasn’t very nice,” her mom says with a slight shake of her head. Zoe perks up a little at that. _No, you’re right, Mom, it_ wasn’t _very nice — just like Connor! He wasn’t nice at all, why can’t you see that, why are you trying to get Evan to craft you this perfect son to mourn?_

 

“Well, _Connor_ wasn’t very nice, so that makes sense.” Zoe doesn’t realize she’s spoken her thoughts aloud until she hears her mother let out a heavy breath and set down her wineglass.

 

“Connor was — ” Her mother pauses, hugging her arms to her chest, and her voice is thick with tears when she starts up again. “Connor was a complicated person.” 

 

“No, Connor was a _bad_ person, there’s a difference — ” She’s fighting a battle she’ll never win, she’s well aware of that, but she has to at least try. 

 

“Zoe, please — ” Her father, weary and wilting.

 

“Don’t pretend like you don’t agree with me!” 

 

“You refuse to see any of the good things, you refuse to see _any_ things — ” Her mother, voice climbing in pitch as she grows more and more distraught.

 

“Because there _were_ no good things! What were the good things?!” 

 

She’s yelled without meaning to, and a nasty little voice in her head whispers, _Maybe you’re more like Connor than you thought._ Evan’s looking at her with pity in his eyes, and Zoe hates it. She doesn’t want his pity, doesn’t want anyone’s pity, as a matter of fact.

 

“I don’t want to have this conversation in front of our guest,” her mother sobs out, turning her back on the table to walk away.

 

“What were the good things, Mom? Tell me!” she calls after her. Normally, Zoe’s not spiteful, but the events of the past week have put a generous amount of spite in her. 

 

“There were good things!” It sounds like her mom is trying to convince herself more than anything at this point, and Zoe’s satisfied enough with that. Good. Let her find that shred of doubt. Maybe she’ll finally realize that she was coddling the wrong child all along.

 

Until Evan chimes in with this: “I remember a lot of good things about Connor.” 

 

“Like what?” Zoe challenges, red tinting the edges of her vision.

 

When Evan starts to list things off, scarlet obscures everything. 

 

••••

 

She goes back to school a few days later, and it’s just like the first day of school all over again, because boy, is it hell.

 

She gets ogled and gawked at and whispered about all day. The crazy antics of her brother are no longer worth Sabrina Patel’s time — no, the school community’s “shared concern for you, Zoe” and the grieving process of the Murphy family have become her latest obsessions. Lizzie from band presents her with a bouquet of flowers at practice, holding it out to her with a proud grin that kind of makes Zoe sick. “Everyone chipped in,” she says, voice disgustingly sweet. “We hope it helps, even just a little bit.” During study hall, the teacher doesn’t even give her work to do, just gives her a sympathetic once-over and tells her to take as much time as she needs. Zoe spends the period scrolling through Instagram on her phone and contemplating the effectiveness of BuzzFeed quizzes on grief, if that’s whatever this weird emptiness she’s feeling can be called.

 

By the time she gets home, she’s stewed long enough to be angry. She slams the door of her car so hard it shakes, stomps into the house without even bothering to take off her Converse (whatever, they have all-wood floors anyway). It’s kind of weird — she’s not used to her anger getting the spotlight, Connor’s usually taking up the entire stage and more — but she can’t say she’s not, in some twisted way, enjoying it. 

 

That enjoyment quickly fizzles out when she walks in on her parents talking to Evan. There are pieces of paper clutched in her mother’s hands — probably those stupid emails Evan had mentioned at dinner, if she had to take a guess — and her dad’s holding on to a glass of scotch like a lifeline. 

 

“Why are you here?” she says. The sound of her own voice startles her — it’s cold, confronting, not a version of herself that she’s accustomed to. Leave it to Connor to fuck her up even more postmortem.

 

“Zoe, wait’ll you see what Evan brought us!” her mother chirps, rushing to her side. “Emails from your brother.”

 

Her father cuts to the more important subject: “How was your first day back?” 

 

Anger bubbles in her chest again at the mere thought of school, images of Sabrina and Lizzie and the flowers flashing before her eyes. “Terrific,” she deadpans. “All of a sudden everybody wants to be my friend. I’m the dead kid’s sister, didn’t you know?” 

 

Her mother looks panicked at the obvious rage in Zoe’s voice, and Zoe supposes she gets that. Her mom probably had anticipated the whole kid-with-anger-issues thing to be over after Connor offed himself. “I’m sure they mean well,” her mother offers. 

 

“I should probably go,” Evan volunteers. Zoe’s eyes narrow at the sight of the _CONNOR_ scrawled on his cast in stupid big black letters. He’s still got his backpack on — he must have come straight from school.

 

“You’re not staying for dinner?” God, she could choke on how unnecessarily doting her mother is.

 

“Oh, I just — I hadn’t planned on it.”

 

“Well, we can do another night. I can cook something for you!” Her mom practically squeals the last few words, the prospect of cooking apparently so enticing to her, and Zoe scowls. Her father, still standing there awkwardly with his drink, keeps glancing over at her, pure misery written all over his face.

 

“Oh, no, you don’t have to—” Zoe notices that Evan’s fingers are white against the edge of their sofa. 

 

“It would be my pleasure. We would love to have you.” Her mother turns to her, and Zoe hopes to God she’s not expecting her to play the part of the eager hostess. 

 

There’s a brief stretch of silence, and it must be equally uncomfortable for all of them, because her father finally says, “Why don’t I show you out?” Evan follows him like a little lost puppy, and Zoe’s glad to be rid of him. 

 

“So… how was band today? I bet they’re happy to have you back, huh?” her mother smiles encouragingly, and there’s a part of Zoe that appreciates the attempt at normal conversation, but there’s a bigger part of her that thinks it’s bullshit. Why pretend to be a normal family when they’re so clearly not? They’ve already exposed their true nature to Evan, so what’s the point in pretending anymore? A quarter of their family unit is _dead_ , like, Jesus Christ, doesn’t that definitely mark them as the exact opposite of normal?

 

“You really don’t have to do this, okay?” Zoe tries to break off to her room, but her mom isn’t having it.

 

“Then what do you want?” she murmurs quietly.

 

“Just because Connor isn’t here trying to punch through my door, screaming at the top of his lungs that he’s going to kill me for no reason — that doesn’t mean that all of a sudden we’re the fucking Brady bunch,” Zoe snaps. 

 

“We are all grieving in our own way,” her mother says cautiously. “I know how much you miss your brother. We all do.” When Zoe doesn’t respond, her mom sets the emails down on the end of the sofa. “You can read these when you’re ready.” 

 

Then, for once, it’s her mom walking off instead of her. 

 

••••

She reads the emails after dinner, her stomach growling because she’d refused to touch a single piece of the rubbery gluten-free risotto her mom had cooked up. She can hear her parents arguing in Connor’s room next door. 

 

These emails are pretty surreal, honestly. It’s concrete proof of their friendship, and Zoe’s not entirely sure how to feel about that. Sometimes it doesn’t even sound like Connor; the talks of orchards and trees and _“I’m getting better every day, dude!”_ don’t at all resemble the ticking time bomb she knew. But it _is_ Connor, she’s holding the very words he wrote in her hands, and that’s almost too weird to handle.

 

Later, when she’s finished every email her mother left on the sofa, she wipes angry tears from her face and wonders why Connor couldn’t be bothered to treat her like Evan. If he could manage to restrain himself long enough to not kick down Evan’s door and threaten to kill him every time they hung out, why couldn’t he do that with his own sister? What about Evan was so different, so much more _tolerable_ than her, huh? Or was Connor just too lazy to try and start over, didn’t have the energy to attempt to wipe their slate clean?

 

(Maybe he hadn’t thought she’d want to start over. Frankly, Zoe doesn’t know if she would have wanted to, either.)

 

Then she thinks back to her mother’s words in the living room that afternoon — _“I know how much you miss your brother. We all do.”_ And those words make her want to scream. Because who is her mother to assume that Zoe automatically misses Connor? It’s not as if her parents didn’t see the abuse; her mother had insisted on personally making the trip to Lowes to match the paint color of her door when they’d had to buy a new one. Is she expected to just forgive her brother because he killed himself? Does her mother believe that Connor’s turned himself into a martyr, and now they all have to worship his memory? 

 

She hates this. Hates her mom for trying to force emotions onto her, hates her father for just going along with it all, hates Connor for doing this to them in the first place.

 

And, she realizes, she kind of hates Evan, too. Hates him for handing them these stupid fucking emails, like _humanizing_ her brother a little bit will make it all better, hates him for trying to paint a picture of Connor as a good person. Hates him for the internal conflicts he’s started in her mind, because what now? For so many years, Zoe’s just viewed her brother as an animal, a _monster_ , but now Evan’s showing her a different side of him.

 

She’s remembering the better times, times when he learned to braid her hair and played the Princess and the Dragon with her and took her Trick-or-Treating. On her very first Halloween, Connor had dressed up as Spiderman, and he’d gone around the whole neighborhood proudly declaring to anyone who crossed their path that he was bound to protect Zoe, that anyone who got in between them had better be ready to get caught in a web.

 

_Fuck._ That’s the kind of shit they put in eulogies. But Connor won’t get a requiem from her, Zoe resolves. There’s no way to erase everything he did. 

 

And anyway, a eulogy from her is probably the last thing Connor would ever want.

 

He stopped loving her a long time ago.

 

( _Right?_ ) 

 

••••

Evan comes over for dinner. He comes over a _lot_. Zoe’s started to question if he even has a home to go back to at the end of the day.

 

She tries to keep to herself whenever he’s around. She has no desire to hear about this supposed other side of Connor, doesn’t want to listen to Evan wax poetic about her brother’s inner kindness or any crap like that. She stays at band practice as long as possible, holes up in her room with homework and asks her teachers for extra work, extra credit, anything to keep her busy. Sabrina calls her “the next Alana Beck”, though Zoe thinks she and the overachieving senior girl couldn’t be more different if they tried. Alana actually cares; Zoe’s just pretending to care, both to keep her parents off her back and so she can have something to do when Evan Hansen’s sitting in their living room.

 

She finds him in Connor’s room a few weeks after his death, looking around like it’s some sort of fucking museum or something. She should be more irritated by it than she is.

 

“Why are you in my brother’s room?” she asks. 

 

Evan jumps almost a foot in the air. “Oh, no, just, I just — I was waiting,” he manages to get out.

 

“Don’t your parents get upset that you’re here all the time?” 

 

“Well, it’s not like I’m — I mean, is it — I’m not here _all_ the time — ” 

 

“Just two nights in a row,” she points out.

 

“Well, it’s just my mom, and she works most nights, or she’s in class,” Evan admits. A stab of guilt runs through Zoe’s chest, immediately accompanied by a spark of irritation. She wants to feel bad for him, wants to feel bad that Evan would probably be alone most of the time if he weren’t at her house, but why should her family’s loss (if it can even be called that) be the center of his universe? He doesn’t get to just waltz in and spin pretty stories about Connor and then make Zoe feel _bad_ for him because his mom works a lot. Everybody’s got a parent that works a lot; big deal. 

 

“Class for what?” 

 

“Uh, legal stuff,” he says, nose twitching.

 

“Where’s your dad?” This is starting to sound more like an interrogation, if she’s honest with herself, but there’s no harm in it, right? She just wants to get to know Evan better, wants to understand, because right now they’re going on one month of knowing each other and she barely even comprehends who he is beyond the anxiety and khakis. She wants to understand why Connor picked him.

 

“My dad’s — uh, he lives in Colorado,” Evan tells her, eyes trained on the floor. “He left when I was seven, so… He doesn’t really mind it either.” 

 

Fuck. This boy is just too sympathetic. And kind of funny. 

 

“Your parents, they’re really great,” Evan throws out, scratching at the back of his neck with the non-casted hand — it must be a nervous tic, she’s seen him do it a lot.

 

“They can’t stand each other,” she confesses. “They fight all the time.”

 

“Everyone’s parents fight,” Evan offers helpfully. Zoe resists the urge to laugh; if only he knew, if only he’d seen the shattered wineglasses and the scattered case files, heard the screams and shouting, felt the weight of the world on his shoulders like she and Connor used to every time they heard the fighting. When Connor started joining in on the fights, she shouldered that burden alone. It’s not as if she’s asking Evan to carry it for her, but — well, it’s nice to pretend that someone else might understand, if only for a moment.

 

“My dad’s in, like, total denial. He didn’t even cry at the funeral,” she says, the words flying off her tongue so naturally now, like second nature. Evan’s a good listener, she realizes. He’s easy to talk to, even if he looks scared for her the entire time.

 

There’s a long pause, then Evan speaks up. “Your mom was saying, gluten-free lasagna for dinner. That sounds really…”

 

“Inedible?” she jokes. And that’s weird; normal, non-gallows humor hasn’t really been a thing for her in a while. It’s nice to have it back, to be able to say something she thinks is funny without everyone in the room staring at her like she’s about to get put on automatic suicide watch.

 

He laughs, and for once, it’s not forced. It sounds almost musical, actually, like a little excerpt snatched straight from one of her jazz band solos. Zoe hates to admit that she likes the sound. “You’re lucky your mom cooks,” he says. “My mom and I just order pizza most nights.” That would explain why he’s almost as tall as Connor was and not nearly as lanky, Zoe thinks. It’s not a bad look on him, though; he doesn’t seem all sharp-edged and unapproachable like her brother. Where Connor was all harsh lines, Evan is soft, and she likes that. She’s sick of things being harsh.

 

“You’re lucky you’re allowed to eat pizza,” she counters, stepping around Connor’s bed so they’re more face-to-face.

 

Evan stares at her like she’s just told him they eat live animals. “You’re not allowed to eat pizza?” he echoes, almost childlike in his innocence. Zoe wishes that this could be their first conversation, starting exactly here. She wishes they hadn’t officially met for the first time because of her brother acting like a psycho; she wishes they weren’t only getting to know each other better now because said brother had killed himself. 

 

She wishes he hadn’t been Connor’s friend.

 

She wishes a lot of things had or hadn’t happened.

 

“Well, we can now, I guess. My mom was Buddhist last year, so we weren’t allowed to eat animal products,” she says. 

 

Evan’s brow furrows. “She was Buddhist last year but not this year?” 

 

Zoe keeps forgetting that he hasn’t known her mother long enough to be familiar with the way she does things. “Yeah, that’s sort of what she does,” she explains. “She gets into different things. For a while it was Pilates, then it was _The Secret_ , then Buddhism. Now it’s free-range, _Omnivore’s Dilemma_ … whatever.” 

 

“It’s cool that she’s interested in so much different stuff,” Evan says brightly.

 

“She’s not,” Zoe snorts. “That’s just what happens when you’re rich and you don’t have a job. You get crazy.” 

 

“Well, my mom always says it’s better to be rich than poor,” Evan replies.

 

“Well, your mom’s probably never been rich then,” she says, a kind of half-laugh escaping that surprises her. This conversation suddenly feels so easy, their banter so natural, and it’s weird. Conversations haven’t felt easy since even before Connor died. 

 

“You’ve probably never been poor.”

 

There’s a brief beat of silence after that, and Evan immediately flushes bright red, like he thinks he’s said the wrong thing. Zoe doesn’t care, really — it’s not like he’s wrong— but Evan scrambles to apologize, like he’s scared he’s offended her. “Oh my God, I — I can’t believe I just said that. I’m so sorry. That was completely rude,” he stutters out, going at a thousand miles a minute.

 

Again, she’s not bothered by it; she’s more amused than anything else. “Wow, I didn’t realize you were actually capable of saying something that wasn’t nice.” 

 

“No, I’m not,” Evan protests, “I never say things that aren’t nice. I don’t even _think_ things like that, I just — I’m very sorry.” 

 

A frown tugs at the corners of her lips. “I was impressed. You’re ruining it.”

 

“Oh, sorry.”

 

Now a smile’s threatening to form — Evan’s constant apologies are admittedly endearing. “You really don’t have to keep saying that.” 

 

Nothing from his end, just a quiet murmur of something that might be “ _Okay”._

 

“You really want to say it again, don’t you?” she grins. 

 

“Very much so, yes,” he confesses. 

 

For a second, it’s just the two of them, looking at each other, stupid smiles on their faces that kind of make her want to blush and then run away. This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy. This is the friend of her dead, psycho older brother, and somehow she’s attracted to him? There’s got to be something wrong with her.

 

“You’re weird,” she says, breaking the silence.

 

“I know.”

 

In the process of talking to Evan, she’s somehow ended up by the end of Connor’s bed without realizing it. Glancing at the plain blue comforter she hadn’t seen in so long, she has to ask: “Why did he say that? In his note?”

 

The confusion is clear on Evan’s face. Her cheeks heat; it’s embarrassing to admit that there’s a part of her that cares this much, a part of her that wants to understand if her brother ever really cared about her. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine Connor writing that letter, talking about her in a way that almost sounded as if he missed her. As if he could have the _audacity_ to miss her. “‘Because there’s Zoe,’” she recites from memory. “‘And all my hope is pinned on Zoe, who I don’t even know and who doesn’t know me.’ Why would he write that? What does that even mean?”

 

“Oh. Um.” Perched on the edge of her brother’s bed now, she’s got a clear view of Evan, and the mixture of pity and hesitation in his eyes kills her. He either doesn’t know the answer or doesn’t think it’s a good idea for her to know. Either way, she’s not going to get an answer. She tries to hide the disappointment likely written all over her features, looking away from him and developing a sudden fascination with the state of her nailbeds.

 

“Well, I guess — I’m not sure if this is definitely it, but, um, he was always… he always thought that, maybe if you guys were closer—” 

 

Zoe hates the way every cell in her body perks up at Evan’s words, but she instantly turns towards him, ready to drink in every piece of information he can possibly offer her. “We weren’t close. At all,” she clarifies, though he probably knows that already. Connor writing about her like she was some kind of fairytale sister, just out of reach — that’s hard to imagine, but him ranting about her to Evan, probably calling her a bitch, that’s not hard to imagine at all.

 

“No, exactly,” Evan says. “And so he used to always say that, um, he wished that he was. He wanted to be.”

 

There’s a disgusting feeling of hope growing in her chest. “So you and Connor, you guys would talk about me?” 

 

“Sometimes,” Evan is quick to correct. “I mean, if he brought it up. I never brought it up. Obviously, uh, why would I have brought it up?” He pauses for a second, then adds, “He thought you were awesome.”

 

She’s back to the hollow kind of laughter now, the utter disbelief evident in her tone. “He thought I was awesome. My brother?”

 

“Definitely,” Evan nods.

 

“How?”

 

“Well. Well, um…” He falters briefly, but then Zoe sees something spark in his eyes, and he gets back on track. “Like whenever you have a solo in jazz band, um. You close your eyes — and you probably don’t even know you’re doing this — but you get this half smile. Like you just heard the funniest thing in the world, but it’s a secret and you can’t tell anybody. But then, the way you smile, it’s sort of like you’re letting us in on the secret, too.” 

 

“He said there was, um, there was nothing like your smile. What did he say — oh, yes, um, he said it was sort of subtle? And perfect, uh, and real. And he said that you never knew how wonderful that smile could make someone feel,” Evan elaborates.

 

Zoe can’t believe what she’s hearing, but Evan apparently has more to say, so she lets him go on.

 

“And he knew that whenever you get bored, you scribble stars on the cuffs of your jeans,” he continues, gesturing rapidly with his arms. “And, uh, Connor also noticed that you still fill out those quizzes, right, like those quizzes that they put in teen magazines. But he kept it all inside his head, everything he saw, because he just — well, he couldn’t find a way to talk to you, he _couldn’t_ talk to you. But he’d always say, ‘If I could tell her everything I see, you know, if I could tell her how she’s everything to me, that would just be, uh, so awesome,’ but, um, he said that you guys were a million worlds apart, and he just didn’t even know where to start.” 

 

Something stirs in her veins, and Zoe thinks it might be something like what her mother’s been feeling all these weeks. Something like, dare she say it — grief. Because why didn’t she ever get to see this side of Connor? Why didn’t everything somehow line up, why didn’t he ever get to tell her all of this? Why couldn’t he find the courage, or why couldn’t Evan have encouraged him to do it?

 

Instead, he left it in a suicide note, a note that hadn’t even been addressed to her. As if it all even meant anything by then.

 

“You know the first time he ever said anything nice about me? In his note. A note he wrote to _you_ ,” she points out. “He couldn’t even say it to me.”

 

“He wanted to,” Evan insists. “He just… he couldn’t.”

 

It’s a silly thing to even ask, but she has to. “Did he say anything else?”

 

“About you?”

 

Of course not. Of course Connor hadn’t said anything else, why would he, all those things Evan had just told her were probably a one-off, from a time when maybe the weed made him sentimental instead of paranoid for once or he’d had some random burst of kindness. Noticing three little details about her, that can’t make up for four years of abuse, how crazy is she to think that anyway. “Never mind, I don’t even really care anyway,” she starts, shaking her head.

 

“No, no, he just, he said so many things about you, I’m just trying to remember all the best ones,” Evan interjects. “Like, um — okay, how about this, he thought that you looked really pretty — er, of course he didn’t think you looked pretty, he was your brother, haha, he thought it looked pretty _cool_ when you put indigo streaks in your hair.”

 

“He did?” she breathes, completely shocked. She’d done those streaks the summer of her sophomore year, and Connor had laughed and made fun of them, said they made her look like a five-dollar prostitute. She kept them for another week before washing them out; she couldn’t enjoy them anymore after that. But maybe he’d teased her because he was jealous or something, who even knows why. Her brother’s actions had never made much sense.

 

“He did,” Evan confirms. “And he also wondered how you learned to dance like you do — he said you always danced like the rest of the world wasn’t there. But he just kept it inside his head, you know? He said that he felt like you were—”

 

“A million worlds apart,” she murmurs.

 

“A million worlds apart,” Evan echoes, and her head snaps up, eyes widening in awe. Had Connor really felt that way? Had he felt the crushing ache of their distance all that time, too, and just been too scared to tell anyone?

 

“But there was just this, um, this great _divide_ between you two, he said,” he says.

 

“He just seemed so far away,” she whispers, gaze falling to the floor as her eyes well with tears she didn’t know she had.

 

“And what do you do when the distance is too wide? He just, he didn’t know?” Evan makes everything sound like a question, but Zoe knows she shouldn’t be all that surprised by the constant uncertainty that comes off of him in waves — the first time she’d met him, he hadn’t even been sure of his own name. 

 

She wonders how he and Connor were ever friends. If there’s one thing she knows about her brother, it’s that he hated uncertainties — he wanted a definite answer, there and then. He didn’t like waiting for the resolution of a book, always skipped straight to the end and read that first, no matter how many times she told him he’d never properly enjoy it that way. He didn’t like writing essays, argued that the grading was too subjective and couldn’t his teacher already tell how much he fucking knew? Most of all, he hated hearing “ _We’ll just have to wait and see_ ”, heard it all the time from his parents and the therapist he’d occasionally seen, didn’t like thinking that recovery never really ended. Just a few days before school had started — a few days before his suicide — he’d gone to a new lady, some middle-aged woman named Cecilia who specialized in cognitive whatever therapy, and he’d come home and punched a hole in his wall when she’d told him that they’d just have to experiment with different medications, that they couldn’t be sure which one would finally do the trick and make him feel better.

 

Maybe that’s what had driven him to do it, in the end.

 

“It’s like I don’t know anything," she says, voice threatening to crack, tears lacing the edges of her vision and blurring the boy in front of her. She hasn’t cried in months, not since before Connor died, and she doesn’t know whether to hate Evan or love him for making her finally fucking _feel_. 

 

“And he’d always ask me, how do you say I love you? ‘I love you, Zoe, I love you,’ he always wanted to say that, but he just — like you both said. You were a million worlds apart.” Evan’s closed the distance between them, sitting on the edge of the bed, too, and as he finishes his thought, he scoots forward.

 

He smells like the woods, is the last thing Zoe thinks before he kisses her.

 

_Kisses_ her.

 

She scrambles backwards immediately, hopping off the bed to leap to her feet. “What are you doing?” She doesn’t give him time to answer, her mom calling from down below that dinner’s ready. “Tell them to eat without me,” she manages to get out before she’s running down the hall to her own bedroom.

 

Evan Hansen just told her that the dead brother she’d thought hated her all along actually loved her, and he thought it was a good idea to _kiss_ her?

 

What the fuck. What the actual fuck. 

 

••••

It’s only a few days later when Evan, Alana Beck and Jared Kleinman in tow, interrupts their family dinner with the stupidest idea Zoe’s ever heard. They still haven’t talked about the kiss — haven’t even talked at all, actually.

 

“We’re calling it The Connor Project,” Evan says. His throat has to be sore from all the artificial brightness he’s put into it.

 

“The Connor Project,” her mom echoes, wonder in her voice.

 

“Imagine a major online presence — ”

 

“With links to educational materials,” Alana cuts in, handing a pamphlet to her mother.

 

“And a massive fundraising drive,” Jared adds. Zoe’s seen him before at band practice; his little sister plays the flute. She’s pretty good, but she’s only a freshman, so she hasn’t had any solos yet.

 

“And for the kickoff event, an all-school memorial assembly next week,” Alana finishes. “Students, teachers — whoever wants to get up and talk about Connor, talk about his legacy.” 

 

“I don’t know what to say.” Her mom sounds near tears, and Zoe thinks what a stupid statement that was to make, since she’s obviously saying something now.

 

“I didn’t realize Connor meant this much to people,” her dad chimes in.

 

“Oh my God, he was one of my _closest_ friends,” Alana emphasizes. “He was my lab partner in Chemistry and we presented on _Huck Finn_ together in tenth grade.” She pauses to giggle. “He was so funny, he kept calling it — well, instead of _Huck Finn — ”_ Halfway through, Alana seems to realize that’s probably not the sort of thing they want to hear, and she stops abruptly.

 

“Well, our class thought of that,” she assures them, resting a hand on her mom’s shoulder. The whole sight kind of grosses Zoe out — where everything about Evan’s memories of Connor seemed genuine, Alana seems fake. 

 

Thankfully, Evan has the common sense to intervene. “For the memorial assembly, I was thinking — I was thinking maybe the jazz band could do something?” he says, eyes landing on Zoe, and a shiver runs down her spine. She knows by the jazz band, he means her. 

 

The idea doesn’t repulse her as much as it would have a week ago, and in spite of herself, a small smile spreads across her face. “Yeah, maybe,” she finds herself telling him.

 

••••

She expects the school assembly to be a thinly-veiled shitshow, an absolute mess that will likely devolve into tears on her mother’s part, quiet frustration on her dad’s, and intervention from the principal. Evan will probably end the morning panicking in a bathroom stall.

 

So when the assembly isn’t a shitshow — when it’s actually kind of beautiful — Zoe is more than taken aback.

 

Taken aback enough that she manages to convince her mom to let her go home and skip third and fourth period.

 

She should be doing homework — she’s got a massive AP US History exam on Friday — but instead, she turns off all the lights in Connor’s room so her mom won’t know she’s in there, grabs her laptop, and sits on the bed with it wide open, the little white apple on the back casting a harsh glow over her features. She’s greeted by a slew of Facebook notifications — the first time she’s been on in almost a month — and several friend requests. She accepts the ones from Alana Beck, Jared Kleinman, and Evan Hansen, deletes the rest. Then she finds an invitation from Alana to become an administrator of a group called The Connor Project. It’s got its own Facebook page, apparently.

 

She joins the group but declines the invitation. She’s trying to forgive Connor, really she is, but she still needs to take this one small step at a time. Rush into it too much, and she’s scared she might overload.

 

She’s also got a message from — who else — Alana. It reads, _Hi, Zoe! So excited to have you working on The Connor Project with us. Your brother deserves every bit of this and more. To start off, I was hoping you’d post a message to the group, something inspirational. I think it’d be really nice for people to hear from Connor’s sister. Since the assembly’s today, we’ll be getting a lot of exposure, and we need to jump on that as soon as possible, so try to get it up by tomorrow night, okay? Thanks!_

 

She can’t help but scoff at that — inspirational message? From _her_? She’s literally the least inspiring person out there, but if Alana wants it, that’s fine, she’ll get it. Just not right now. She’s got nothing to say at the moment.

 

She figures she should probably go ahead and check out The Connor Project’s official page, see what she’s getting herself into. She types the name into the search bar, pulls up the page, and, oh, look, they’ve got a little drawing of a sun as their icon, isn’t that cute. The cover picture of sophomore-year Connor, the most recent photo anyone could find of him, isn’t as cute, but she does her best to scroll past it as quickly as she can. And, wow, that’s nice, they’ve got 16,239 followers — 

 

Wait, _what?_

 

Zoe has to do a double-take, then a triple-take, even a quadruple-take, before she can actually process the numbers in front of her. 

 

Yup. The Connor Project, a page built to preserve the memory of her brother, has more followers than her entire friends’ list combined. 

 

This can’t be real.

 

She keeps scrolling, and the posts she sees shock her even more. People are sharing videos from all over the country — Vermont, California, Idaho, even _Alaska_ — talking about Connor’s legacy, how they needed to see this today, how their friend needed to see this today, how The Connor Project is exactly what young people in America need to cope with their modern society. 

 

But what’s the “this” they’re referring to?

 

Then she sees it, pinned at the top of the page: a video. The thumbnail is Evan, in his little checkered polo and a striped tie Zoe’s never seen before, standing on the stage of the auditorium at their school. She clicks Play, and her jaw drops as she realizes what she’s watching.

 

It’s Evan’s speech. Someone posted Evan’s speech about Connor — most likely Alana — and now it’s gone viral. It’s got over 100,000 views already, and it’s barely been up three hours.

 

Holy shit. _Holy shit._

 

Zoe doesn’t expect the flood of emotions that hit her next, but there they go, some strange mixture of pain and sorrow and gratefulness all mixing together in her chest, raging in her veins like wildfire. She doubles over with the intensity of it, and her shoulders begin to shake as she’s suddenly wracked with the sobs she’s been devoid of for weeks.

 

She’s thankful for Evan in this moment, more thankful than she’s ever been for anyone or anything before, because he’s given her something to mourn, something to hold on to. 

 

He’s given her her brother back.

 

And as the tears subside, the words come to Zoe. She knows what she wants to say.

 

She reaches for her laptop, fingers flying across the keyboard, and presses “Post”.

 

_Even when the dark comes crashing through, when you need someone to carry you, you will be found. -Zoe_

 

That post goes viral, too. 

 

••••

She invites Evan over for dinner that night. Her mom, by the grace of God, orders Chinese takeout for them all. “I know I’m supposed to be following that new diet, but I think I can take a break for us to celebrate what Evan’s done here,” she says with a wink. After, Zoe pulls him upstairs and into Connor’s room — it only feels right. She sits him down on the bed and pours her heart out.

 

“Everything you said in your speech, you don’t know how much — what you’ve given all of us, everyone, my family, me,” she says, voice thick with tears. It’s like now that she’s started, she can’t stop crying. But that’s okay; she’s done being a human robot.

 

“Um, this is—”

 

“You’ve given me my brother back,” she whispers.

 

And then she launches herself forward with an intensity she didn’t know she had, and she kisses him.

 

Evan seems surprised by it at first; he breaks away from the kiss, just stares at her for a second.

 

He looks like he wants to say something, and Zoe’s got plenty to say, too, a million confessions on her tongue, but — 

 

But then, he pulls her back and kisses her again, harder this time, and Zoe forgets everything else but him.

 

••••

She catches Sabrina Patel gossiping loudly about them in the hallway. “ _They won’t last a month,_ ” she says. “ _I mean, c’mon, her dead brother’s best friend? No way is that relationship gonna end without a therapy visit._ ”

 

But Sabrina’s wrong. She’s got to be wrong. They’ll last a month. They’ll last a month and more. 

 

Evan invites her to his house on a breezy Sunday evening a week before their unofficial month anniversary. He leads the way to his room, and they chat about school and Alana’s latest fundraising venture for The Connor Project before she asks him the question that’s really on her mind.

 

“So, when does your mom get off work?”

 

“Oh, she has class Sunday nights, so she won’t be home for another few hours,” he says.

 

“We have the whole house to ourselves?” Her disbelief must be palpable, because Evan nods vigorously, a thin sheen of sweat popping up on his forehead.

 

“You know it.”

 

“We should throw a kegger,” she jokes.

 

Judging by the panicked look on her boyfriend’s face, he doesn’t pick up on the humor. “Yeah, we should totally throw a kegger,” he mumbles nervously.

 

“Until your mom gets home,” she says in a funny voice, hoping it’ll ease the tension in the air.

 

“In three hours!” he replies, fingers twisting at the hem of his shirt. They both break into awkward laughter, and there’s silence for a moment as she walks around the room, fingers tracing the headboard of his bed. She’s never been in here before; up until now, the majority of their relationship has been spent at her house, either talking about The Connor Project with her parents or watching Netflix in her room. This is new to her, and Evan’s room is tiny and humble, but it’s nice. It feels cozy, like it could be a home away from home.

 

“Thank you, um — thank you for coming,” Evan finally says. 

 

“You realize I’ve been, like, asking to come to your house for weeks, and every time you’ve immediately said no?” she teases. 

 

“Yeah, I know, I know,” Evan quickly replies, “which is why I appreciate that you’re here now.” He goes to stand next to her, their hands grazing lightly, and the spark between them makes Zoe’s heart flutter. He’s so sweet, so earnest in everything he does and so beyond generous, and she doesn’t know how she’s gotten so lucky. All she knows is she doesn’t want to lose him, doesn’t want to lose this, _ever_.

 

“What are all these?” she asks, pointing to a stack of papers on Evan’s nightstand. He immediately reaches across the bed and grabs them, spluttering out an excuse.

 

“Oh, my mom is just obsessed with these college scholarship essay contests she found online, and she keeps printing out more of them.” He sounds a little irritated by it, and Zoe watches carefully as he shoves them into a drawer under his bed.

 

“There are so many,” she says, slightly in awe at the sheer amount of papers.

 

“Yeah, I know, and I’d have to win probably like a hundred of them to actually pay for college, when you add it all up, tuition, housing, books.” 

 

“Your parents, they can’t — ” She trails off halfway through, unsure if she really wants to finish that sentence and provoke a conversation that stressful. She’s still just a junior, not applying to colleges yet, but as a senior, Evan’s drowning in the college application process. He’s already told her what a nightmare it is.

 

“No. Not really.” He finishes the thought for her, quiet and meek, and Zoe’s heart breaks just a little for him. Evan’s so smart, smarter than he even realizes, and he deserves a chance to go to college.

 

“I’m sorry.” 

 

There’s a beat of silence, then Evan says, “Well — well, hey, I meant to tell you before, we had a meeting with The Connor Project a few days ago, you know I think we have a great strategy for raising more money for the orchard — ”

 

And, oh, God. Here’s the problem. Evan is great, he’s amazing, seriously the ideal boyfriend — but half of their conversations always end up being about Connor. And she knows that Connor’s the reason why they met, she understands that their relationship literally would not _exist_ without Connor, but it’s getting to be a little much. She’s trying to heal. She’s trying to let go of the past, and part of forgiving Connor involves not talking about him all the time, which Evan seems to have a hard time with.

 

The Connor Project is a big part of his life, she understands. She’s not as involved, only really occasionally helping with some Facebook stuff because jazz band takes up the majority of her time. But she gets that it’s kind of Evan’s thing and he has to help, and that’s okay. It’s just that when it comes to their relationship, it shouldn’t be about Connor. It should be about them, just the two of them. Only them.

 

“Can we talk?” she says softly. Evan’s eyes immediately grow to the size of dinner plates. He sucks in a big breath and mutters a garbled curse. “What?”

 

“No, it’s just, you’re breaking up with me, right? That’s why you came over, so.” He lets out a strangled laugh, and Zoe raises a brow.

 

“Breaking up with you?” 

 

“I know, right, God, like how presumptuous can I get? I don’t even know if we’re, like, ‘dating officially’ or whatever, which isn’t even… You know what, it’s cool, you can tell me, I’m not gonna cry and start, like, breaking things, it’s fine,” he stammers out, a million miles a minute as per usual.

 

“I’m not breaking up with you,” she assures him.

 

“Okay. Uh. Thank you,” he mumbles, giving her arm a slight squeeze.

 

“Don’t mention it,” she says lightly with a small giggle, reciprocating the touch.

 

“That’s great news, I’m sorry.” He reaches up to wipe at his eyes, and Zoe’s constantly left in awe at how emotionally raw he is. She could never handle being that vulnerable 24/7. 

 

“I don’t wanna keep this a secret anymore,” she tells him. “I mean, what are we even hiding?” They haven’t told anyone about their relationship officially, though the rumor mill at school had figured it out a while ago, but Zoe’s kind of sick of the sneaking around. She likes Evan; why can’t she tell the world? Fuck Sabrina Patel and what her band of merry followers have to say. They don’t matter; the two of them, what they have, that’s all that matters.

 

“Well, people might think that — that it’s — not respectful of Connor’s memory,” Evan says slowly, playing with the strings of his hoodie. “For us to be t— you know.”

 

“Happy?” she offers.

 

“No, I know. I know, but, but — but, think about it from their perspective. I mean, I was his best friend, you were his sister.”

 

“Okay, so when do we get to be more than that?” The question seems to floor Evan. “It’s just because my entire life, everything has always been about Connor, and right now, I just wanna — I need something that’s just for me, okay? I don’t want this relationship to be all about my brother, or the orchard, or the emails. I just want you.”

 

Evan’s gaping at her. She tries for something simpler. “I don’t need you to sell me on reasons to want you. I don’t need you to search for the proof that I should, either. You don’t have to convince me, or be scared that you’re not enough. What we’ve got going is good, okay? And I don’t need more reminders of all that’s been broken, or for anyone to fix what I’d rather forget. I just want to clear the slate, start over, y’know? Work on quieting the noises in your head, if we can compete with all that.”

 

He lets out a tiny chuckle that makes her heart swell, and she steps closer to him, their hands intertwining. “How about it’s just us, and anything that came before won’t count anymore? How does that sound? Only us?”

 

Evan smiles with a vibrancy she’s never seen before, and Zoe thinks that maybe this is what moving on feels like. 

 

••••

He’s pulling away. Zoe can feel it at dinner later that week, when her parents invite Mrs. Hansen over to tell them about the money. The college money, Connor’s leftover college fund that will never be used for anything other than maybe a new car and some airline tickets if Evan doesn’t take it. 

 

It’s better for it to go to someone who actually needs it.

 

But his mom doesn’t take it, actually looks _upset_ by it, and when she storms out, Evan hot on her heels, Zoe knows something’s wrong.

 

Something’s horribly, horribly wrong.

 

And she goes up to her room and cries, panics, because she’s not ready to lose this yet. 

 

She doesn’t want to lose Evan. She’s already lost enough. 

 

••••

He’s a liar. He’s a goddamn _fucking_ liar.

 

In all her life, Zoe has never been so angry. Not when Connor broke her first guitar. Not when her dad said that Connor had tried to kill himself for attention. Not when her mom refused to punish her brother for making fun of her in front of all her friends and embarrassing her to the point of tears. Not even when Connor died.

 

She’d thought that had been anger. But no, _this,_ this betrayal on a fundamental level, this has brought about a whole new type of fury. 

 

This must be what Connor always felt when he’d try to kick her door down. This must be what he felt 95% of the time.

 

If this is how he felt, then Zoe understands why he chose to die. 

 

It’s sheer torture.

 

She deletes all the photos of Evan from her phone, blocks him on Facebook, unfollows The Connor Project, then decides to just get rid of her page entirely. Alana posting the suicide note had led to a barrage of hate messages from strangers, anyway. She deletes Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat, too. She keeps Tumblr, though. She’s anonymous on there, so it’s safe for now.

 

She goes into her brother’s room, and she cries. She’s spent the better part of the fall learning to love her brother again, learning to miss him, to mourn what they could’ve had, and now all that suddenly becomes one big fat lie? 

 

She’s been missing a lie all this time, a creation of Evan Hansen. He should be a fucking novelist. If he makes it to college, she hopes he majors in creative writing.

 

When she gets a text from The Connor Project updates, asking her to donate $5 for a memorial bench for the orchard, she throws her phone against the wall and screams. 

 

Then, stupidly, when she goes to pick it up, she gets a shard of glass stuck in her hand. It doesn’t even turn back on. She screams again, this time more in pain and frustration than anything else.

 

When her mom comes upstairs to check on her, she takes the phone with gentle hands and murmurs, “Oh, Zoe. It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.” 

 

It’s only when her mom pulls her close and starts to stroke her hair, like she’s five years old again, that Zoe allows herself to cry. 

 

••••

She learns how to mourn Evan Hansen. She grieves the loss of what they’d had, and she does her best to move on.

 

She learns how to mourn her brother, too. It's different than before, and equally as hard, but she's proud of herself for confronting her emotions head-on instead of letting them stew.

 

It’s difficult. Sometimes she finds herself breaking down in the middle of the day for seemingly no reason at all. But she keeps going, makes new friends in jazz band, passes her exams with flying colors, stays busy, and finds herself a senior in high school planning her future before she barely even has time to blink.

 

She’s started seeing a therapist. It’s the therapist who tells her that she should try to end things with Evan on a good note, before she goes off to college in the summer, when she receives the text from him.

 

It’s spring, the Connor L. Murphy Memorial Orchard is freshly completed. The weather will be nice.

 

Zoe still has his number — she never deleted it — and so, straight out of a session with Dr. Sherman, she accepts his invitation.

 

She sits on a bench, alone, basking in the cool afternoon breeze, for what seems like an eternity before she hears his gentle voice behind her. “Hi.”

 

“Hey.” She jumps up, backs away a little, does her best to add some distance between the two of them so she won’t get too caught up in the sight of him.

 

“How’re you?”

 

“Good, pretty good.”

 

“You graduate soon, right?” he asks.

 

“In two weeks,” she nods.

 

“Wow, how’s being a senior?”

 

“Busy,” she admits. Not that that’s a bad thing, she thinks. Busy is good. Busy means losing yourself in work and not emotion.

 

“Oh, I remember that,” he half-laughs. 

 

“How’s being a freshman?” 

 

“Oh, actually, I decided to take a year off, so.” Of course. Probably hadn’t had the money, what with her parents’ generous offer quickly rescinded upon the truth being told. Zoe wishes she could say a part of her still doesn’t think he deserves it.

 

“Yeah, just — just try to save some money, get a job, um. I’ve been taking classes at the community college, so I’ll have some credits to transfer in the fall,” he explains.

 

She allows him a small smile. “That’s smart.” 

 

“Yeah, we’ll see. In the meantime, though, I can get you a Friends and Family discount at Pottery Barn. If you’re looking for overpriced home décor.” 

 

“You know, not at the moment,” she says lightly.

 

“Well, if you change your mind… I’m only working there for a few more months, your window of opportunity is closing fast,” he jokes.

 

“I always imagine you and Connor here,” she confesses after a beat. “Even though, obviously…” She trails off. No point in finishing that.

 

“This is my first time,” he tells her, glancing around. “I mean, I’ve probably driven by it like a thousand times, I just. Every time I think about getting out of the car, I feel like… I don’t know, like I don’t deserve to, I guess.” He pauses. “It’s nice. It’s peaceful.” 

 

“Yeah, my parents are here all the time,” she says. “We do picnics like every weekend. It’s helped them a lot, actually, having this.”

 

“They never told anyone about Connor’s — about the note, who really wrote it. They didn’t have to do that,” he says softly. “They could have told everyone what I did.”

 

“Everybody needed it for something,” she admits. 

 

“That doesn’t mean it was okay.”

 

“It saved my parents.”

 

Evan finally breaks their eye contact at that. “It’s weird, I, um. Over the fall, I found this, um, yearbook thing my class made in eighth grade. Most people did, like, collages of their friends,” he explains. “Um, but Connor’s was a list of his ten favorite books. I’m trying to read all of them. I, um, I know it’s not the same thing as knowing him — it’s not, at all, but. I don’t know, it’s—”

 

“Something,” she interrupts. He smiles, and she does too. “It’s been hard, it’s been a hard year.” Saying it out loud to someone other than her therapist and her parents, it’s like a breath of fresh air.

 

“I know, I — I’ve been wanting to call you for a long time, I just really didn’t know what I would say, um. So then I just decided to — to call you anyway.”

 

“I’m glad you did,” she tells him.

 

“I wish we could’ve met now,” he says wistfully. “Today, for the first time.”

 

He doesn’t know how many times she’s had that same thought before. “Me too.”

 

And suddenly, something in her shifts. 

 

Something tells her that it’s time to say goodbye. Their relationship has come to its natural end, now, and there’s no point in holding on any longer.

 

“I should probably, um—” She gestures to her purse, and Evan understands immediately. “It’s just, exams are this week.”

 

“Of course, totally, can I just, um. Can I ask you, though?” Evan takes in a breath. “Why did you want to meet here?”

 

There’s a long pause as she considers her answer. Because it makes it easier? Because it helps me cope? Because it’s pretty and nice out and I need fresh air?

 

Those answers would all roll off her tongue so naturally, but the truth feels better. The truth is something she’s got to start getting used to. “I wanted to be sure you saw this,” she says. 

 

And she leaves, and she cries on the way home, but when she steps out of the car and looks up at the blue, blue sky, she thinks it might be better this way.

 

Maybe it’ll all end up okay. 

 

She’ll just have to keep going before she finds out.

 

 


End file.
